ASSOCIATION SYMPOSIA [ IAHS ]

H01 – Unsolved Problems in Hydrology (UPH)

Convener: Günter Blöschl (Austria)

Co-Conveners: Antonio Chambel (Portugal), Jeff McDonnell (Canada), Elena Toth (Italy)

Description

The International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS), in collaboration with the Hydrology Divisions of EGU and AGU as well as the IAH, have recently called for compiling a list of unsolved scientific problems in hydrology that would invigorate research in the 21st century (https://iahs.info/IAHS-UPH/). The initiative has been motivated by David Hilbert’s (1900) unsolved problems which have greatly stimulated focused research in mathematics. In a public consultation process through on-line media, followed by two workshops and a consolidation phase, a large number of potential science questions were collated, prioritised and synthesised, which resulted in a set 50 Unsolved Problems in Hydrology. The purpose of this workshop is to

• discuss this set of science questions and how they relate to each other, and to
• discuss potential strategies of addressing them, including through activities of the IAHS, EGU, AGU and IAH.

The workshop will consist of a small number of invited contributions, pop-up contributions and plenty of time for discussions. Submissions of abstracts for pop-up contributions are invited that address either of the two focuses of the workshop.

H02 – Using Fingerprinting and Modelling Techniques to Explore Transfer and Connectivity in Catchment Sediment Systems

Convener: Adrian Collins (UK), Simon Pulley (UK)

Co-Conveners: Ian Foster (UK), Allen Gellis (USA), Paolo Porto (Italy)

Description

Fine-grained sediment is increasingly recognised globally as one of the most pervasive water pollutants and plays a pivotal role in the redistribution of many additional contaminants. Given the resource demands of traditional empirical methods for exploring sediment sources, transfers and fate in river catchments, applications of both sediment source fingerprinting techniques and of computer simulation models have increased many fold. Such approaches elucidate key characteristics of sediment transfers across temporal and spatial scales but also provide insight into catchment connectivity as an underpinning control on landscape scale sedimentological behaviour. This symposium therefore seeks to review progress in this area and to capture case studies using either approaches in isolation or collectively.

H03 – Land Degradation Due to Natural and Anthropogenic Drivers: Impacts on Runoff, Soil Erosion and Sediment Yield at Multiple Scales

Convener: Paolo Porto (Italy)

Co-Conveners: Kazimierz Banasik (Poland), Sergey Chalov (Russia), Adrian Collins (UK), Michael Stone (Canada), Joris Eekhout (Spain)

Description

Soil erosion by water is a serious environmental problem in many areas of the world. Its impact has traditionally been assessed in terms of soil degradation and loss of productivity, but recent years have also seen an increasing awareness of the off-site problems related to downstream sedimentation and water pollution, which are linked to more general environmental degradation. In this context, the occurrence of wildfires and the intensification of agricultural activities have increased pressure on land and water resources, resulting in different forms of soil degradation, of which soil erosion and associated sedimentation are the most important. The worldwide economic costs of agricultural soil loss and associated sedimentation downstream have been estimated at US $400 billion per year. In addition, as a result of climate change, world average soil erosion is expected to increase significantly. Indeed, climate change is modifying precipitation regimes such that drought periods and/or extreme rainfall events are becoming more frequent in worldwide agro-ecosystems. This will increase soil degradation risk and erosion magnitude threatening the sustainability of soil and water resources and food supplies. This increasing concern over problems of accelerated soil erosion and associated land degradation as well as offsite impacts and associated diffuse source pollution has emphasised the need for improved information on changing rates of soil loss in the context of key drivers and thus for reliable means of assessing soil erosion rates across agricultural areas. In order to address these requirements, this symposium seeks to assemble case studies or reviews of measurements of runoff and soil loss at multiple scales (plots and catchments) including those combining different strategies in order to assess the impact of natural and anthropogenic factors on land degradation for areas where variation in land use and/or climate change has occurred during the last 2-3 decades. Case studies using modelled projections of alternative environmental futures are also welcome.

H04 – Source, Transport and Fate of Cohesive Sediment in Aquatic Systems: Implications for Water Quality and Ecosystem Health

Convener: Michael Stone (Canada)

Co-Conveners: Adrian Collins (UK), Sergey Chalov (Russia), Paolo Porto (Italy)

Description

The increasing decline of surface water quality has become a key management challenge for many government agencies globally and changes in water quality have been related to the increased availability and transfer of cohesive sediment in rivers. Cohesive sediment is widely recognized as a vector for the transfer of nutrients and contaminants through river systems and it can also degrade the ecology of riverine habitats. This symposium seeks to advance knowledge of the source, transport and fate of cohesive sediment in aquatic systems and its implications for water quality and ecosystem health by addressing topics such as flocculation, fine sediment gravel bed interactions, contaminant form and mobility as well as emerging cohesive sediment models designed to simulate contaminant transport and fate.

H05 – Tracers for Understanding the Sources, Pathways and Fate of Pollutants in the Hydrological Cycle

Convener: Christine Stumpp (Austria)

Co-Conveners: Przemyslaw Wachniew (Poland), Maki Tsujimura (Japan), Randy Slotler (USA), Giovanny Mosquera (Ecuador)

Description

Water pollution is one of the biggest environmental challenges. Pollutants cause the worldwide deterioration of water resources and aquatic ecosystems. Assessment and mitigation of water pollution rely on identification of its sources and pathways and on quantification of the removal processes in groundwater and surface water environments. These issues provide a cross-disciplinary research challenge which can be addressed with the application of multiple artificial or environmental tracers, including isotopic, gaseous and ionic species for tracing water flow and transport through the hydrological cycle. Hydrological tracers are indispensable for understanding flow paths and dynamics of water flow in the subsurface, as well as of runoff patterns in catchments. Stable isotope signatures of pollutants (e.g. of N, C, B) can provide unique insights into their origin and processes resulting in their removal or transformation within the hydrological cycle. The integrative nature of information provided by tracers makes them suitable for the application in a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, from soil column to aquifers to large river catchments. Tracers are essential for the evaluation of lag times associated with pollutant transport through the groundwater system that is a crucial factor in the programmes of measures undertaken to improve water quality in catchments. Furthermore, tracer data are used for verification and calibration of conceptual and numerical models of hydrological systems. We invite contributions that demonstrate how environmental and artificial tracers improve the understanding of pollutant transport in in hydrological systems of any size and type.

H06 – Long-Term Spatiotemporal Evolution of Catchment Water Quality and Sedimentation

Convener: Xiaohong Chen (China)

Co-Conveners: Jean Nepomuscene Namugize (Rwanda)

Description

Along with climate change and intensive human activities, the aquatic system in a catchment scale has been altered worldwide. While some are heavily polluted, thus endangering essential services such as clean drinking water, other water bodies still show incredible beauty and pristine conditions. Especially in developing countries, water pollution has often become the biggest obstacle in development of social economy. At the same time, water quality is steadily improving in some catchments mostly in developed countries. This symposium aims to deepen understanding on the internal factors and mechanism of long-term spatiotemporal evolution of catchment water quality, soil erosion and sedimentation. The aim of this symposium is to discuss what controls the long-term spatiotemporal evolution of catchment water quality and sedimentation, natural or social factors, e.g., climate change, economic level, population, management, technology or culture. Approaches to model and evaluate the impact of both natural and social factors on catchment water quality, soil erosion and sedimentation. What should and what can we do in a scientific and sustainable way to mitigate regional water pollution and soil erosion? What can we learn from experience and lessons in water pollution control and soil-water conservation?

H07 – Human-Water Interactions in Water Quality Models

Convener: Akhilendra Gupta (India)

Description

It is increasingly recognised in hydrology that incorporating co-evolving human-water interactions is critical to understand the water cycle. Arguably, these interactions are even more important for water quality prediction. However, traditional modelling approaches are static and uni-directional. As a result, they overlook two-way feedbacks between water and society and fail to account for the interaction between human and water systems across global/regional/local scales (e.g. grey water production and use; water quality of return flows; interactions between drought and water quality). Contributions to this workshop are invited in which water quality models include human-water interactions, such as simulating how different human behaviours impact on river/lake or soil water quality. Contributions which also consider water quality monitoring systems to provide underpinning data to assess these modelling approaches are also welcomed.

H08 – Hydrology and Water Quality Contributions to the Water-Energy-Food Nexus?

Conveners: Kate Heal (UK), Wouter Buytaert (UK)

Co-Conveners: Jean Nepomuscene Namugize (Rwanda)

Description

The water-energy-food (WEF) nexus is now widely-accepted and promoted as a framework for analysing interactions among different sectors regarding human activities and needs. Hydrologists are positioned to play a leading role in developing and implementing WEF approaches to address development and resource challenges. In particular, hydrologists can support a more holistic approach to WEF analysis to include not only the magnitude of water fluxes, but also water quality and the supporting services of ecological systems in order to balance human and ecological demands on the aquatic ecosystem. For instance, the potential of water of different quality to "cascade" through a service chain: cooling water of energy being used in agriculture; polluted water from agriculture being used for cooling. Contributions to this workshop are invited which provide case-studies of WEF nexus analysis, particularly with a hydrological and water quality emphasis, or provide theoretical advances in considering hydrology and water quality within the WEF nexus.

H09 – Water Quality in Operational Water Resource Management

Convener: Kate Heal (UK)

Description

Water quality measurements, modelling and process understanding often inform indirectly water resource management decisions in combination with water quantity information and model outputs. With advances in technology and monitoring, these interactions are occurring increasingly in real-time. The aim of this symposia is to: (1) showcase research in which water quality directly inputs to operational water resource management and (2) reflect on ongoing experience to identify developments required in water quality monitoring and process understanding to strengthen incorporation of water quality into water resource management decision-making.

H10 – Quantifying Vulnerability and Human Impact on Urban Water Resources

Convener: Florent Barbecot (Canada), John Gibson (Canada)

Description

Water demand arising from population growth and related urbanization has increased significantly over the past decades and will expand to levels never before seen in human history. Within this context, evaluating available surface water and groundwater volumes, renewal rates, water quality, and potability is a strategic societal issue, and generally allows the assessment of water resources sustainability and vulnerability. In disturbed environments such as urban areas, behavior of water has been found to be highly variable and subject to drastic water quantity & quality changes. Tracing and dating water to map short-term dynamics of the water cycle, water supply and wastewater systems, i.e. from years to days, is a major scientific challenge that requires development of reliable tracer methodologies. This symposium welcomes submissions describing both surface and groundwater studies applying a wide range of scientific approaches. Submissions utilizing bulk, elemental, and isotopic signatures of organic and inorganic matter are particularly welcome. We also encourage studies using new analytical techniques and novel methodological approaches.

H11 – Recent Advances in Peatland (Eco)Hydrology and Biogeochemistry

Convener: Pete Whittington (Canada)

Co-Conveners: Colin McCarter (Canada), Jonathan Price (Canada), Scott Ketcheson (Canada)

Description

Peatlands cover about 15% of Canada’s land surface and globally store roughly a third of the terrestrial soil carbon. A greater understanding of peatland ecohydrological and biogeochemical processes is critical to understanding the role these systems may play in a warming climate. These peatland processes rely on complex interactions between hydrological, biological, and chemical processes; yet there remains a dearth of knowledge of the interactions of these processes in peatlands. The goal of the symposium is to bring together peatland scientists from across the world to share the most current knowledge about peatlands. We welcome all studies involving the hydrology, ecology, biogeochemistry, or combinations therefore, of peatlands in undisturbed and disturbed (e.g., drainage, resource extraction) systems, as well as laboratory or theoretical (e.g., modelling) experiments.

H12 – Coastal Hydrology, Hydrogeology, and Hydraulics in an Era of Unprecedented Change

Convener: Barret Kurylyk (Canada)

Co-Conveners: Christopher Russoniello (USA), James Heiss (USA)

Invited speakers: Clare Robinson (Canada), Makoto Taniguchi (Japan)

Description

Current, unprecedented rates of global environmental change have drastic societal implications, including deleterious impacts on human water security. This is most evident along coastlines where population density is three times higher than in non-coastal settings, and where changing conditions in both marine and terrestrial settings converge. In 2017, the ‘Year of the Hurricane’, several hurricanes devastated the Caribbean and the United States. The storms caused hundreds of casualties and an estimated $500 billion in infrastructure and property damage. Although surface flooding due to such storms has dominated news headlines, coastal aquifers can also experience drastic salinity increases following storm surges due to infiltration of seawater. These effects on water quality in the subsurface outlast those in surface settings and are not as well understood. Also, concentrated coastal anthropogenic activity often contaminates aquifers and streams that discharge into and pollute coastal water bodies. Future conditions for coastal water resources and ecosystems will likely worsen due to climate change (sea level rise and storm surges) combined with the projected increases in coastal population density and human activity. This symposium will bring together topics in coastal hydrology, hydrogeology, and hydraulics that involve field, laboratory, and modeling efforts that explore water, heat, and chemical fluxes in these dynamic environments over a wide range of spatiotemporal scales. Potential topics include but are not limited to surface flooding, submarine groundwater discharge, coastal ecosystems, saltwater intrusion, benthic exchange, intertidal processes, coastal sediment dynamics, storm surge dynamics, biogeochemical cycling, and coastal management and policy.

H13 – Advancements in Modeling and Characterization of Aquifer

Convener: Corinna Abesser (UK)

Co-Conveners: Felipe de Barros (USA), Alberto Bellin (Italy), Aldo Fiori (Italy), Antonio Zarlenga (Italy)

Description

Modeling flow and transport in aquifers poses significant challenges because of the general scarcity of data and information for developing effective models. Heterogeneity of natural formations is a strong controlling factor for transport of solutes and other agents in the subsurface environment, which is hard to fully characterize due to the constraints imposed by subsurface inaccessibility and the often-inadequate resolution of traditional exploration methodologies. Boundary conditions are also a significant source of uncertainty, often disregarded, in particular at large scales. Recent advances of in situ characterization techniques and modeling capabilities, both in term of model conceptualization and mathematical representation, opens new perspectives in assessing the status of groundwater resources at all scales, from local to global.

This symposium deals with new methodologies to better assess and predict, through characterization and modeling, the status of groundwater resources at all scales.  We seek contributions dealing with theoretical, methodological and application aspects of subsurface characterization and modeling the Earth critical zone, by using innovative approaches to assess, and possibly reduce, large uncertainty still plaguing simulation results.  Data assimilation and inference methodologies are other aspects of the modeling chain that are considered here, such as all aspects related to modeling in support to risk analysis and the evaluation of system resilience and capability to metabolize stressors. Besides characterization and modeling specifically tailored to subsurface water resources, we are interested in contributions dealing with parametrization of groundwater in meteorological and Earth system models. Analyses conducted at local, catchment and global scales are all welcome.

H14 – Sub-Seasonal to Seasonal Predictions: Skill and Limits for Decision-Based Forecasting

Convener: Harald Kunstmann (Germany)

Co-Conveners: Chris White (Australia), Koray K. Yilmaz (Turkey), Andy Wood (USA), Ilias Pechlivanidis (Sweden), Andrew Robertson (USA)

Description

The continued development of sub-seasonal to seasonal (S2S) ensemble predictions – with forecast horizons ranging from ~10 days to several months and seasons ahead – provides new opportunities for improved and effective decision-making across sectors such as agriculture, forestry, transport, energy, health, insurance, tourism and infrastructure. This ICCLAS-led symposium, in partnership with the international HEPEX research and practice community (https://hepex.irstea.fr/), will bring together scientists, operational forecasters, practitioners and decision-makers to discuss the latest developments in S2S hydrological forecasting and their application across the water management and disaster risk reduction sectors. This symposium invites abstracts from both the meteorological and hydrological forecasting communities that address the skill and application of S2S predictions from across the following topics:

• Sources of predictability on S2S timescales, including large-scale climate variability and modes, weather regimes and dynamics
• Methods for model skill improvement and uncertainty reduction, including ensemble generation design and improved modelling approaches and techniques
• Evaluation of probabilistic climatic and hydrological forecasts, including ensemble verification and assessments of the limitations of S2S forecasting
• Implementation of operational S2S hydrometeorological forecasting systems
• Demonstrations of ‘seamless’ hydrological forecasting across S2S timescales
• Development and use of decision-based hydrological forecasts for water resources management and disaster risk reduction activities
• Creation of user-relevant climate and hydrological applications to address the needs of users and decision-makers, including community efforts

The aims of the symposium are to better understand and improve hydrometeorological predictability on S2S timescales, and to promote the dissemination and practical use of hydrological forecasts to enable user communities to take advantage of ensemble forecasts for decision-making. We particularly invite presentations from the WWRP/WCRP Sub-seasonal to Seasonal (S2S) project that utilise the newly established S2S database, and from the HEPEX research and practice community.

H15 – Short-Range Hydrometeorological Forecasting

Convener: Marie-Amélie Boucher (Canada)

Co-Conveners: François Anctil (Canada), Maria-Helena Ramos (France), Fredrik Wetterhall (UK), Vincent Fortin (Canada), Gokcen Uysal (Turkey)

Description

Short-range hydrological forecasts (several hours to 10-15 days) provide crucial information for decision making based on unknown future hydrometeorological conditions. This may concern end users dealing with both risk assessment and water resources management, and involves several scales in time and space. A large number of operational applications may benefit from hydrological forecasting systems that issue reliable and accurate forecasts: flood warning, drought risk management, reservoir control, water use planning, hydropower production, etc.

This symposium is dedicated to address scientific developments in hydrological forecasting and uncertainty assessment for the needs of practitioners, decision- and policy-makers. The objective is to identify challenges and discuss solutions in implementing, using and communicating uncertain hydrological forecasts in operational practice.

The symposium will focus on:

• How to efficiently pre-process and bias correct atmospheric forecasts for their use in hydrologic models?
• How to produce reliable probabilistic forecasts of extremes in hydrology?
• How to evaluate the quality and economic value of hydrologic forecasts in a manner that is meaningful to users and adapted to their decision-making contexts?
• How to combine various techniques for reducing and estimating hydrologic predictive uncertainty (e.g., ensembles and/or multi-models, data assimilation, error correction, statistical post-processing)?
• How to make efficient use of estimates of predictive uncertainty in practice?
• How can users be more engaged in the definition and development of novel forecast products that meet their needs for warning time, accuracy and reliability?
• What best practices can be identified when facing the challenges of transferring science into operational practice to respond to stakeholders and societal needs?
• How to effectively communicate forecasts and forecasts uncertainty to users and decision makers?

The symposium is organized under the auspices of the HEPEX (www.hepex.org), a community of practice in hydrological ensemble predictions, which was launched in 2004 to foster scientific developments necessary to improve the skill of probabilistic hydrological predictions and their use in operational contexts.

H16 – Floods: Processes, Forecasts, Probabilities, Impact Assessments and Management

Convener: Alberto Viglione (Austria)

Co-Conveners: Svenja Fischer (Germany), Bruno Merz (Germany), Andreas Schumann (Germany), Chris White (Australia), Salvatore Grimaldi (Italy), Paul Pilon (WMO), Abou Amani (UNESCO), Toshio Koike (Japan)

Description

One main aspect of the direct socio-economic relevance of hydrology consists in its ability to predict or to forecast extreme flood events. Prediction refers here to the assessment of the probability of a value related to the flood (e.g., the maximum peak discharge during one event) to be exceeded, without specifying the time of occurrence. Forecast refers instead to a statement of the future development of a variable related to the flood with a specification of the time of occurrence. With regard to their impacts, floods play a very important role for the society in general and human beings living in flood prone areas in particular. Because of missing information and a short memory of harmful events in the past, the public awareness of floods is often insufficient and flood prevention and protection are insufficient in many parts of the world. Existing tools and methods for flood prediction and forecast may be outdated, as new problems have to be considered, e.g. by increases of:

• uncertainties, caused by climate change,
• risks resulting by the concentration of people and values in river valleys,
• demand for more reliable and more complex hydrological data for flood design,
• complexity of flood protection at the river basin scale, where one method may affect several others and so on.

The large variety of flood problems demands a concerted action of experts from different branches of hydrology. In this sense, this symposium could benefit from contributions from many IAHS- commissions, from their methodologies and tools, to provide a comprehensive view of the state-of-art in this field of research. It would be useful to bring experts together, to specify new developments in future research and last but not least, to increase the visibility of IAHS. In this sense, this call covers many aspects of floods, including processes of flood generation, the assessments of flood probabilities, regionalisation issues, flood forecasting and the need for impact forecasts and other economic aspects of risk management.

H17 – Advances in Snow Hydrology

Convener: Timothy Link (USA)

Co-Conveners: Melody Sandells (UK), Danny Marks (USA), Tobias Jonas (Switzerland), Alexander Gelfan (Russia), Elzbieta Czyzowska-Wisniewski, (USA)

Description

The storage and release of water from seasonal snowcovers constitutes a critical component of the annual hydrological cycle in many parts of the world. Quantifying, understanding, and predicting the processes that control snow distribution and ablation dynamics provide ample research challenges, especially in complex mountainous terrain. The spatial distribution of snowcover and its physical properties is typically highly variable at the meter to the regional scale. Its dynamics are influenced by surrounding topography and vegetation that control accumulation and redistribution processes, as well as local micrometerological conditions that control snowcover energetics and ablation. Accurate modelling of snowcover dynamics requires methods to simulate a large range of physical processes that act and interact at a range of spatial and temporal scales. Advances in these areas are needed and relevant to develop improved tools for water managers concerned with floods, droughts, water supply, and/or hydropower generation.

This symposium will bring together experimental and modeling experts to address recent research in snow hydrology. We especially encourage contributions related to topics such as:

• Novel measurement approaches for snowpack states and fluxes
• Feedbacks between climatic and snow hydrological processes and patterns
• Snow-vegetation interactions in complex terrain
• Effects of climate variability and change, especially in the rain-snow transition zone
• Impact of landcover changes on snow hydrology
• Advances in modeling, including operational applications
• Representing small scale variability in large scale modeling applications

H18 – Advances in Remote Observation Of Seasonal Snow

Convener: Tobias Jonas (Switzerland)

Co-Conveners: Jeff Deems (USA), Jessica Lundquist (USA), Danny Marks (USA), Maria-Jose Polo (Spain), Elzbieta Czyzowska-Wisniewski, (USA)

Description

Seasonal snow represents an important freshwater resource and critically sets conditions for ecosystem functioning in cold regions around the world. Today’s remote sensing technologies not only enable the measurement of snow distribution across the landscape, but also the simultaneous characterization of terrain and vegetation canopy structure. These combined datasets have reached a level of detail that ultimately allows the study of snowcover dynamics and ecosystem feedbacks to understand the interactions of patterns and processes at exceptionally small scales. This symposium will bring together those working on data from remote sensing technologies such as laser scanners, radar, as well as RGB, thermal, and hyperspectral imagery with the aim of quantifying snow water resources, studying snowcover dynamics, and investigating interactions with atmospheric and ecohydrological processes.

H19 – Advances in Remote Sensing Hydrology

Convener: Yangbo Chen (China)

Co-Conveners: Christopher Neale (USA), Chris Hopkinson (Canada), Maria Polo (Spain), Gilles Boulet (France), Koray K. Yilmaz (Turkey), Kartic Bera (India)

Description

Many advances have occurred in remote sensing and earth observation during recent decades and a new sub-discipline of Hydrology has emerged called Remote Sensing Hydrology. These advances are accelerated by the rapid development of satellite, internet and information technologies. These advances, by providing observation in space-time that were not available by traditional hydrological observations have enabled many hydrological science and engineering problems to be solved more effectively. Using remote sensing observation technology, hydrological variables can be monitored in near real-time and quantitatively estimated at high spatial resolutions over large regions. By assimilating these observations and variables, huge advances and potential are expected for improving hydrological modeling and predictions. This symposium aims to share the latest developments in remote sensing hydrology worldwide, discuss the challenges and possible solutions, and present future research and application directions. The following topics will be addressed but not limited to:

1. Sensors and Systems. This subtopic will cover technologies, platforms and remote sensing products, used–or with the potential to be used –in hydrological remote sensing. Presentations on the latest international campaigns, initiatives and data products with relevance to hydrological remote sensing, such as GCOSECVs, GPM, SMOS, SMAP, GRACE(-FO),Sentinels, SWOT, SPoRT, etc. will be invited.
2. Theories and methods. This subtopic focuses on the latest progress in theories and methods for a) Remote sensing monitoring and estimation of hydrological variables, including but not limited to water vapor and temperature, precipitation, snow pack and ice cover, evapotranspiration, soil moisture, groundwater, water body and flood inundation, river discharge, lake and sea levels, water pollution, etc. and b) Assimilation of remote sensing variables into hydrometeorological models, for example, parameter estimation, and updating state variables and fluxes that form an integral part of hydrometeorological modelling and predictions.
3. Applications. This subtopic discusses the applications of remote sensing technology and products in hydrology, water resources, environment, ecosystems, flood monitoring and prediction, as well as climate human activity impact assessment and projections in water systems. Various hydrological tools based on remote sensing data will also be presented, such as distributed hydrological models.

Authors who present their work will be invited to submit a full paper for review, which if successful will lead to publication in an international refereed journal special issue after this symposium.

H20 – Predictions in Ungauged Basins: What’s New?

Convener: Thomas Skaugen (Norway)

Co-Conveners: Gil Mahe (France), Aldo Fiori (Italy), Nilay Dogulu (Turkey), Michelle Newcomer (USA), Honeyeh Iravani (UK)

Description

Many problems related to predictions in ungauged basins (PUB) still remain open although great advances has been made since the launch of the previous scientific decade of IAHS. The topic remains highly relevant, necessary and inspiring and seems to focus the attention on key problems in scientific hydrology. The scope of hydrological estimates needed at ungauged sites broadens, and hydrological models are needed for estimates of classical hydrological quantities such as floods and low flow in addition to snow conditions, groundwater and evapotranspiration. Advances in PUB will hence greatly benefit many of the emerging issues to be addressed by the hydrologic community and many other scientific and societal communities in need of hydrological information. Contributions are invited to this symposium that address all aspects of predictions in ungauged basins, from classic regionalization strategies of model parameters to optimal use of available (new) information, new modeling concepts and model philosophies, including inputs from remote sensing and groundwater modeling.

H21 – Comparative Inventories Of Water Resources Systems and Their Functioning - Methodology and Tools for Their Assessment, Protection and Efficient Use

Convener: Barry Croke (Australia)

Co-Conveners: Zongxue Xu (China), Alberto Montanari (Italy), Giuliano Di Baldassarre (Sweden), Suxia Liu (China), Nishadi Eriyagama (Sri Lanka)

Description

In high-income countries, the structural expansion of water management systems is in many cases discussed controversially. Often it is not on the agenda or plays only a minor role in water management planning. Emphasis is given to adapt existing water management systems to a changing environment, by modifying them technically, adapting their operation or even to remove them.

In contrast to this, structural measures are still the main choice in low-income countries. The utilization of non-structural methods to improve water supply and to reduce water demand are often hampered due to insufficient power to put plans, actions, or laws into effect. Under ongoing changes of socio-economic conditions and accelerated climate variability, which has increasing impacts on water resource systems, the interplay of structural and non-structural measures becomes an increasing relevance.

This requires an update of existing methodological tools and a widening of our view to differences between continents and countries. New experiences, technologies, and data could be a starting point for a re-thinking about the most suitable tools and methodologies, and to avoid a preference for traditional measures, which fail to reflect the actual complexities of water resources systems.

This symposium has the goal of providing a comparative inventory of water resources systems and to specifying the differences and similarities of methodologies and tools to solve current and future water problems. Key issues include, but not limited to:

• Water management in data sparse regions: What new methodologies are available to fill the data gap for water resources system design, operation and management;
• Adaptation of water resource systems (e.g. reservoirs, inter-basin transfer systems, irrigation systems) to changing environment: dynamic models including novel methods of water supply/demand management;
• Non-stationarities in water management planning as a matter of time scales;
• Evaluation of trade-offs between different water users, sectors and societal needs;
• Environmental flows in low-income countries: methodologies for low cost assessments in master plans;
• Consideration of environmental aspects - water uses for human society and ecosystems;
• Impact of climate change and (changing) natural variability on the management of water systems;
• Protection of water resources to enhance water use capacity: options, limitations and results;
• Consideration of possible impacts of climate change and co-evolution with society on water resources systems in practice, including impact on migration, particularly in low-income countries;
• New directions in water management and exchange of expertise in the framework of IAHS.
• A number of questions raised in the recent “Unsolved Problems in Hydrology” discussion are particularly relevant to this symposium, for example:
• How can we identify tipping points of hydrological systems (including water resources systems) due to changes in climate and/or human impacts?
• How do we adapt hydrological models to be able to extrapolate to changed conditions?
• What is the role of water in the establishment and collapse of ancient civilizations and the implications for contemporary water management?
• How to extract information from available data on human and water systems in order to inform the building process of socio-hydrological models?
• How can we convincingly put a value to hydrological observation systems with open data to reverse the current trend of decline of observation systems?
• What tools/techniques can be used to better package the science of hydrology (including uncertainty) to decision makers and the general public?

Papers addressing these questions, and related to surface and groundwater systems (considering water quantity and/or quality), and the co-evolution with society are particularly welcome. The symposium will bridge the gap between theory and practice by meaningful case studies provided by scientists to demonstrate the applicability of new methods and a critical review of practitioners to show their requirements for appropriated scientific solutions for their problems.

H22 – Time Series of Remote Sensing Data in Water Management

Convener: Benjamin Mewes (Germany)

Co-Conveners: Maria Jose Polo (Spain), Andreas Schumann (Germany), Kartic Bera (India)

Description

In the decade, the availability of temporal variable remote sensing data has been increased significantly. Several IT-platforms provides large data sets for low costs and open-source software libraries ease the access to machine-learning and state-of-the-art WebGIS applications. Recently developed technologies like machine-learning allow the investigation of large data sets especially in data-sparse regions and could further ameliorate the benefit drawn from the available data. This results in a faster transition from scientific research to end-user application. However, the utilization of such data repositories requires specific technical skills and technologies. The cost-benefit ratio of these data for practical purposes are still uncertain for potential users.In this workshop, the availability of such data, the additional gains of their use, the technical requirements and the existing limitations for operational water management issues will be discussed. Typical applications are e.g. assessments of snow conditions, estimation of the water contents in reservoirs, assessments soil moisture conditions, water stress assessments for vegetation, inundation mapping and several others.  At the workshop, practical examples of the operational use of time series of such data, provided by remote sensing in water management, and the coherently developed data-driven modelling and analysis approaches should be presented to demonstrate the scientific and technical opportunities and to raise the interest of practitioners for such technologies.

H23 – Innovative ICT Tools for Water Management and Science

Convener: Laura Foglia (USA)

Co-Conveners: Berit Arheimer (Sweden), Andrea Brookfield (USA), Mary Hill (USA), Rudy Rossetto (Italy), Melody Sandells (UK)

Description

The importance of developing innovative Information and Communication Technology tools has been recently widely recognized in both water management and open science. The needs of including the stakeholders (water providers, customers, policy makers, scientists) in the full water management decision process (from model development to decision making) has become more evident. As an example, the European Union specifically supports participatory approaches and evidence-based decision making in water resources management (see e.g. the ICT4Water cluster). In parallel, user-driven virtual water-science laboratories are being developed to encourage more openness in science. The aim is to facilitate sharing of new findings earlier in the discovery process, and to ensure reproducibility of computational experiments.

This symposium encourages contributions from all over the world where advanced ICT tools have been either developed or applied in an innovative way to support stakeholder involvement and discussion, either for water resources management decisions or news forms of research. The expected ICT tools presented can include:

• Development and experience from using new hydrological software to facilitate water management or research
• Innovative ideas on how to enhance participation in water resources management or virtual water-science laboratories (for example, innovative web-applications).
• Data sharing solutions to facilitate data exchange between researchers, stakeholders, and policy makers.
• ICT tools to better connect different water sectors, such as the well-known water-food-energy nexus.
• ICT tools to overcome geographical distance between scientists in comparative hydrology and to share joint protocols for model inter-comparison projects.
• ICT tools to communicate what water and other natural resources mean to people in terms of survival, economics, beauty and enjoyment.

H24 – Modeling Hydrological Processes and Changes Under a Changing Environment

Convener: Jianzhong Zhou (China), Yangbo Chen (China)

Co-Conveners: Marco Borga (Italy), Hafzullah Aksoy (Turkey), Alexander Gelfan (Russia), Alberto Viglione (Austria), Gil Mahé (France), Harald Kunstmann (Germany)

Description

Hydrological processes have been changing due to the dual impacts of climate changes and human activities, and modeling the hydrological processes and changes has long been the goal of the global hydrological communities. Challenges still exist, such as lacking effective models and in-situ observation data, uncertainties related to climate change prediction and human activities estimation and monitoring. This symposium aims to discuss these challenges, propose solutions and report latest progression modeling the hydrological processes and changes of world river systems and urban areas. Topics to be addressedbut not limited to are urbanization and climate changes in the past and future decades at city, watershed, regional and global scales; observation and simulation of hydrological processes and changes at different time-space scale in different climate zones, including snow, precipitation, evapotranspiration, surface water, soil water, underground water, flood and drought, case studies in large rivers and greater urbanized areas are particularly welcome; hydrological models and tools, uncertainties associated and the controlling methods; hydrological response changes induced by climate changes, or/and human activities. Special issues on internationally refereed journals will be produced based on the presentations after this symposium.

H25 – Quantifying Uncertainty in Hydrological Systems: A Bayesian Point of View

Convener: Dmitri Kavetski (Australia)

Co-Conveners: Jasper Vrugt (USA), Mark Thyer (Australia), Lucy Marshall (Australia), Elena Volpi (Italy)

Description

Past decades have seen a flurry of activity in Bayesian applications in hydrology. These applications include those to quantify model and parameter uncertainty, develop alternatives to reduce structural uncertainty through sensible averaging procedures, to new alternatives of defining uncertainty by relaxing the framework for specifying model likelihoods. Additionally, hydrologists are starting to adopt data assimilation as a new way to both reduce predictive uncertainty, and also to assess where assumed model structures may not be fully adequate. This symposium invites contributions involving new and innovative ways of using Bayesian methods for the type of hydrological problems mentioned above, as well as other emerging problems that such techniques have been put for use in.

H26 – Hydrologic Time Series with Contributions on Methodologies, Applications, Assessment and Alternatives for Nonstationarity, and Assessment of Uncertainty

Convener: Saman Razavi (Canada)

Co-Conveners: Demetris Koutsoyiannis (Greece), Krzysztof Kochanek (Poland), Seth Westra (Australia), Ebru Eris (Turkey), Yuanfang Chen (China), Dong Wang (USA), Uwe Haberlandt (Germany), Alin Carsteanu (Mexico), Elena Volpi (Italy), Hafzullah Aksoy (Turkey)

Description

Stochastic hydrology offers very efficient tools for the characterization of the relevant processes in hydroclimatic systems, e.g., for hydrologic design, hydroclimatic systems modeling and forecasting and water resources management. The application of the theory of stochastic processes is needed to achieve a faithful and consistent representation of natural processes and characterize the inherent uncertainty in probabilistic terms. This allows, e.g., to simulate synthetic series representing the relevant characteristics of the processes – the main statistical properties across multiple spatial and temporal scales – for assessing the hydrological impact in a changing environment, where change might be due to human intervention (e.g. in river basins) or to climatic variability.

This symposium call for papers developing and discussing stochastics tools to systematically deal with uncertainty and change and space-time variability, for simulation or disaggregation purposes of hydroclimatic variables such as, e.g., precipitation, temperature, streamflow and soil properties. Contributions are invited, for instance, on the improvement of stochastic modeling in hydrology, innovative techniques for identifying model structure, calibrating parameters, assessing uncertainties etc.

H27– Multivariate Statistics for Hydrological Application

Convener: Fateh Chebana (Canada)

Co-Conveners: Taha Ouarda (Canada), Andras Bardossy (Germany), Amir AghaKouchak (USA), Salvatore Grimaldi (Italy)

Description

The statistical description of natural events frequently needs a joint modeling of several random phenomena. In the last ten years a significant improvements of multivariate statistical tools opened the venue to new application and analysis of hydrological data. Copula function is one example, indeed it allows to model several continuous random variables, independently of their marginal distributions, and since its development new hydrological design procedures were introduced and new interesting studies on drought, rainfall, runoff, and regional studies were possible.

The purpose of this Workshop is to collect contributions on spatial, temporal and other multivariate statistical techniques and their use for the improvement of hydrological modelling.

H28 – Contributions on the Unsolved Problems in Statistical Hydrology

Convener: Ashish Sharma (Australia)

Co-Conveners: Elena Volpi (Italy), Salvatore Grimaldi (Italy), Yuanfang Chen (China), Ebru Eris (Turkey), Krzysztof Kochanek (Poland)

Description

The IAHS solicited contributions to identify 23 unsolved (but solvable) problems in hydrology that would revolutionize research. As part of this initiative, STAHY contributed three such problems. These were, (a) how to identify the independent factors effecting a nonlinearly evolving hydrologic response? (b) how to identify an optimal dimension to use in multivariate hydrologic analysis using Copulas? And, (c) how could we detect and attribute change in flood characteristics (or any extreme valued random variable that is impacted by multiple factors)? This symposium invites contributions that help illuminate the uncertainties surrounding the above three questions, ranging from simple illustrations of traditional approaches that have been used for each, to new ideas or frameworks that could be developed that may ultimately lead to these changing to “Solved”.  Additional contributions on problems independent of the three listed above, but those that fall into the “Unsolved” categories, are also welcomed.

H29 – Water-Related Education, Training and Capacity Development: Revisiting the Scopes and Competencies

Convener: Christophe Cudennec (France)

Co-Conveners: Valérie Borrell (France), Claudio Caponi (WMO), Anil Mishra (UNESCO), Vladimir Smakhtin (UNU), Eric Servat (France)

Description

Initial and life-long education, training in operational services, and capacity development within institutions and society are actually facing many challenges in the water-related fields: changes in hydrology and water issues imbedded in the wider environmental and societal changes; evolution of techniques from monitoring and modelling to supporting stakeholders’decisions and the society at large; dealing with synergies and tradeoffs in the perspectives of security and sustainable development… This workshop welcomes conceptual developments as well as practical/experimental study cases addressing questions such as:

• Are we producing the right type of water specialists?
• How to assess whether the curricula are adapted to the needs of the current and future challenges?
• Does the current system of water degrees match with the needs of development frameworks – i.e. SDGs, Sendai, Paris Agreement  … ?
• How to blend hydrological approaches with understanding of global development processes, business, communication, practice?
• How to develop agility regarding change and innovation?
• Are we shaping and blending accurate on-line resources and learning modalities, including provision of required skills and values?
• Are the transitions quick enough?
• How do we ensure developing countries are not left (even more) behind?
•  …

Experiences with the competency approach are encouraged to see how this method is and can be used in our field to tackle the challenges: providing frameworks for designing and renovating modalities and curricula; offering life-long reflexivity and progress opportunities; accomodating and developing innovations; improving the position and efficiency of hydrologists and water-related managers in societies in transition.